YAAS: "Holes" Movie Night and T-Shirt Tie Dye

If you want to learn about the original conception and mission of this program, read my What is YAAS? post. TL;DR: It's a weekly group for youth age 14-24 where we'll be doing community service work, library programs, hosting guest presenters, and making connections with peers in a safe and welcoming environment.

Tonight was a very special night of YAAS. A while back, we had a t-shirt design contest to determine what the YAAS emblem would be. 

These were the designs submitted...

And after voting, this is what was voted in as our official group shirt design!

We ended up going with a black and white version

I spent my downtime at work ironing on the designs for the last couple of weeks so the kids wouldn't have to take the time to do it, and could focus on tie-dying. The logic behind this was, everyone's shirt will be both uniform and individual; same icon, different tie-dye patterns and colors. A group, but still individuals.

In order to make the tie-dying easy and accessible for everyone, we combined the project with a movie night and then had 2-3 people at a time come outside to dye their shirts. "Holes" is one of my all-time favorite movies of any genre, and when we talked about potential movies to show at YAAS it came up as a choice everyone would enjoy. If you haven't seen it or read the book by Louis Sachar, I highly recommend both. In fact, the movie is on my [very, very short] list of book-to-movie adaptations that was actually well done.

Here are some pictures of the tie-dye process...

...and here we all are a few weeks later at a YAAS outing wearing our fantastic group shirts!

YAAS: Earth Day Seed Bombs

If you want to learn about the original conception and mission of this program, read my What is YAAS? post. TL;DR: It's a weekly group for youth age 14-24 where we'll be doing community service work, library programs, hosting guest presenters, and making connections with peers in a safe and welcoming environment.

April means, among other things, Earth Day! I couldn't think of anyone better to teach YAAS about environmentalism than my best friend, Anna. You might remember her from March's Artist Trading Card program...she was back wearing her gardener hat tonight!

At Anna's request, I made a quick PowerPoint showing all the seeds she brought with her and what they'll look like when fully grown. 

Our group also took an in-building field trip to the library's Seed Library, where patrons can "check out" seeds and take them home to plant. I put "check out" in quotes because you're obviously not bringing the seeds back after they're planted. HOWEVER, the seed library also has a spot for donation. After a patron's plants grow up, the idea is that they would harvest seeds from that plant and donate them back to the library. So in a way, you do turn them back in. 

Instead of just learning about the plants and having the kids take some home to plant, we did a cool gross messy awesome project with compost and clay! If you've never heard of seed bombs, here's short video introducing the concept.

The ones in the video are the size of a golf ball, and most of ours were about the size of baseballs, but they'll still work. Look how much fun everyone had!

 

Anna + plants = true love

Group hand moisturizing

I am notoriously anti-dirt... and they got me

YAAS: Spoken Word Poetry Workshop

If you want to learn about the original conception and mission of this program, read my What is YAAS? post. TL;DR: It's a weekly group for youth age 14-24 where we'll be doing community service work, library programs, hosting guest presenters, and making connections with peers in a safe and welcoming environment.

This week we had a very special guest from our sister city location, the Mesa Arts Center. The MAC does a lot of diverse and wonderful programming, including poetry and hip hop workshops given by Tomas. YAAS members did a wonderful job following his directions and coming up with original, personal poetry.

Our group with Tomas post-workshop

I also wanted to share this video posted by Tomas about his background and why he pursued work as a spoken word artist and teacher. He is amazing at commanding a room and teaching valuable lessons in the exact way youth need to hear them. We were so lucky to host him!

YAAS: National Pet Day

If you want to learn about the original conception and mission of this program, read my What is YAAS? post. TL;DR: It's a weekly group for youth age 14-24 where we'll be doing community service work, library programs, hosting guest presenters, and making connections with peers in a safe and welcoming environment.

National Pet Day is on April 11th every year. I started celebrating it at the library so I could have a standing program every April, but it's turned out to be a major hit. Last year's event even had a visit from our Vice Mayor!

The main idea of this holiday is to make sure our pets have great lives. I like to take it a step further by taking time to acknowledge all the homeless pets-to-be out there looking for their forever home. Our group made tug toys out of fleece to donate to a local animal shelter, and had a visit from a City of Mesa Animal Control officer and her adorable rescue puppy! 

This video shows the basic instructions for making a toy, but you can braid or twist it any way you want as long as it's nice and tight so it takes aggressive puppies a long time to chew all the way through. Using the same technique as a summer camp lanyard works very well, as does braiding for younger kiddos. It also turns out that chewing on fleece is good for a dog's teeth! 

 

YAAS: Women's History Month

If you want to learn about the original conception and mission of this program, read my What is YAAS? post. TL;DR: It's a weekly group for youth age 14-24 where we'll be doing community service work, library programs, hosting guest presenters, and making connections with peers in a safe and welcoming environment.

March is Women's History Month, and we take it very seriously at our library! In addition to this program, my coworker Sarah did a Women's History Month storytime and a giant book display. Plus, next week we're further celebrating WHM by assembling hygiene packs for a local women's shelter. 

This week, we welcomed my friend Sydney, who is a social worker and very involved in educating young people on black history and women's history. Sydney gave a presentation on famous women from the 1700's to present day, including some of our newest Congress members who have the distinction of being the first of their gender, race, or religion to be sworn in. Here's a full list of the women Sydney presented:

• Michele Obama (1964-): First lady of the USA 2008-2016, writer and activist
• Jane Elliot May (1933-): Created the blue vs. brown eyes experiment in 1968
• Sojourner Truth (1797-1883): Born a slave, became free in 1827 and advocated for abolition, women's rights, and civil rights until her death
• Jane Adams (1860-1935): Known as the mother of social work
• Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1992): Trans woman, LGBTQ+ rights activist, known for being one of the original instigators of the Stonewall Riots
• Sylvia Rivera (1951-1992): Latina LGBTQ+ rights activist, founded Street Transgender Action Revolutionaries (STAR) with Marsha P. Johnson
• Gloria Steinem (1934-): Known as the mother of modern feminism, prolific writer and activist
• Harriet Tubman (c1820-1913): Most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad, born into slavery and became free in 1949, advocated for abolition, acted as a Civil War spy
• Maya Angelou (1928-2014): Poet, memoirist, actor, singer, activist, worked with Malcom X and Dr. MLK Jr. during the Civil Rights movement
• Rosa Parks (1913-2005): Her actions sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, civil rights activist, granddaughter of slaves
• Mary McLeod Bethune (1975-1955): Educator, stateswoman, philanthropist, civil rights activist
• Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962): First lady of the USA 1933-1945, one of the most politically involved first ladies to date
• Ellen Degeneres (1958-): Comedian, TV show host, actor, LGBTQ+ activist, publically came out as a lesbian on her sitcom in the late 90's and it was a Big Deal
• Ilhan Omar (1981-): First Somali-American to be elected to legislative office and US Congress
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989-): Youngest woman to serve on US Congress at 29 years old
• Debra Haaland (1960-): One of the first Native American women to be elected to US Congress
• Sharice Davids (1980-): First openly LGBTQ+ Native American elected to US Congress
• Ayanna Pressley (1974-): First black woman elected to the Boston City Council, first black woman to represent Massachusetts on US Congress

As always, my kiddos had excellent insightful questions and soaked up the discussion like sponges. I really appreciate that this presentation included a lot of influential women from their lifetime! It made the subject more real and topical to them, instead of sticking only with women from centuries ago.

YAAS: Artist Trading Cards

If you want to learn about the original conception and mission of this program, read my What is YAAS? post. TL;DR: It's a weekly group for youth age 14-24 where we'll be doing community service work, library programs, hosting guest presenters, and making connections with peers in a safe and welcoming environment.

DID YOU KNOW ABOUT ARTIST TRADING CARDS?!? BECAUSE I DIDN'T AND NOW I'M OBSESSED WITH THEM.

My best friend Anna is an artist who is very involved in the local art scene. Not only does she know a lot of people (Antoinette was her idea based on a contact she made at some art event or other), she is aware of a lot of art concepts that I'm not familiar with. So, Anna sent me some info on the history of Artist Trading Cards and I compiled it into a PowerPoint alongside some pretty pictures of cards lovingly stolen from Google.

Overview on what exactly an ATC is

Side note, I'm totally obsessed with this artist now

Briefly examined the history of miniature art, trading cards, and participation as an art form

More info I learned tonight--apparently there's an offshoot of ATCs that are for profit instead of trade

Brief overview on how to make ATCs

Info on where our youth can go to trade cards if they get into this as an art form

And then we made our own! Look at my ducklings being creative <3

Anna talking about the history of ATCs

  

  

  

  

  

Everyone laid out their cards for a picture of all of them at the end of the night!

ATCs are a very cool and little-known concept that was only invented in the late 1990's. If you're looking for an easy contemporary art lesson that anyone can lead and participate in no matter their art ability level, this is it!